Mistakes I've made?

[questionmark693]

So the first group I ever DM'ed really enjoyed the campaign we played in (until we ended up splitting up cuz of life). But as I've learned about the game since that campaign, I've noticed small things I didn't do correctly in our game. Things mostly revolving around magic items. For one, none of our magic items had a 30% chance of glowing. For another, when they paid for their mwk weapons to get enhancements and magic effects and stuff, it was more or less instant-not a day per thousand gold like it should've been. These are the only things that came to mind right away, but do you guys think that these mistakes were grievous? Did they matter at all? Should I follow them more closely when I DM my next group?

[Vhaidara]

I don't think I've ever had a DM use the light thing. Most people don't even realize it is a thing. And either way, that's actually only on weapons.

On the same note, unless you have a PC interested in crafting themselves, it usually just speeds things up to not make them wait on enchantment for higher level items.

[Hurnn]

Mostly irrelevant, the enchanting things usually happens during down time anyway, glowing weapons are really more of a hindrance to the party, than a benefit so I guess that one is a matter of perspective.

[WbtE]

It's a good habit to go over a campaign just passed and see what could have been done better, though these rules issues are fairly minor. Sorry to hear about your old group breaking up, and good luck with the next campaign. :smallsmile:

[Phaederkiel]

the glowing thing is absolutely ok to let slide, as it is far more a hindrance than anything else. try giving sneaky mcSneak a glowing dagger, he will thank thee well.

Cutting the crafting time can become quite dangerous. It is okay, if the party does not do shenanigans, but can get out of all hands, if they do. Imagine if the wizard would load all spells he had not cast every day into scrolls, such things tend to let "why does m wizard overshadow everyone"-threads pop up.

Also, if the wizard can just enchant the weapon of the barbarian to be good against whatever stands in the next room, that is not very good either.

[questionmark693]

Our wizard wasn't crafting at all, which I think is part of the reason I didn't familiarize myself with those rules, but I wouldn't have been worried about any shenanigans regardless. Our most optimized player was probably the rogue, followed by the fighter/knight warblade. We had a wizard, cleric and druid in that party, and those two characters were the shining stars every time :P Thanks for the opinions thought guys :)

[mephnick]

Man, I make worse mistakes and I've been DMing for 10 years.

I wouldn't worry about it, as long as people enjoy the campaign, no one cares.

[Vhaidara]

Yeah, you have nothing on what I did.

For those wondering what I did, I let my players sell hydra blood. Now, I'm bad at units of measurement, so the deal I gave them was 50gp per ounce. They had just killed 2 hydras. They had 5 nearly empty Handy Haversacks.

They broke the economy.

[Urpriest]

The glowing thing isn't so important. It's a minor effect, and it only is relevant for randomly generated items anyway.

For crafting times...I don't think it unreasonably broke your game, but it definitely can break a game in the right circumstances. For one, long crafting times incentivize you to give downtime, which is needed by other characters for spell research or advancing subplots or things like that. So if you were giving less downtime than you should have, that might be partly to blame.

[Honest Tiefling]

Did everyone have fun? Yes? Then you did fine. If your future groups are going to get uppity about weapon glowing, you might need a new group. Weapon enchantments could lead to power creep, but you could probably handwave it away if it bugs you.

In general, you should alert new groups to changes to the rules you intend to follow, but they should also be understanding of new DMs as well.